


Siblings

by Silex



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angels, Angst, Biblical References, Biblical Reinterpretation, Broken Families, Demons, Gen, Siblings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-14
Updated: 2018-08-14
Packaged: 2019-06-27 12:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15685446
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Silex/pseuds/Silex
Summary: Rachiel, an angel of the Ophanim order descends to the Pit in search of one of her Fallen siblings in the hope that they might seek forgiveness and return with her.





	Siblings

**Author's Note:**

  * For [mechanonymouse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mechanonymouse/gifts).



A speck of light, infinitesimal in the swirling darkness of the Pit, descended in a furtive shimmer of eyes and circling rings of glowing gold around a blinding fire. The War was ongoing and for Rachiel to travel to this place was to put herself at risk. It was a risk she was willing to take, for she had heard rumors that a particular sibling of hers had survived the Fall. Those rumors had brought her to this place, so far from light and Grace that even she felt despair. It was a journey she had embarked on many times before, but each time it filled her with fresh shock.

Hungry, choking darkness surrounded her as she approached the roiling ground below. Nothing was still, not even the earth itself was at peace.

The Damned screamed and howled as they were put through every manner of torment that the mortal mind could hope to devise. Every wicked instrument of inflicting pain could be found, racks and iron bars, cages and gallows where sufferers kicked and writhed without dying. The landscape itself was twisted to vile uses, every tree adorned with bodies, every rock bearing evidence of violence.

What was conspicuously absent in the macabre scene were any of the Fallen. It seemed that not even they could abide such a place and in their absence the Damned had taken the duty of their suffering into their own hands.

Rachiel wept, not because of the violence and suffering on display, for as an angel of the Ophanim order, she had fought in the War herself, but because of the utter lack of compassion.

A woman begging for mercy as she was beaten with the branch of a thorn tree turned on her tormentor the instant he was distracted and tore at him tooth and nail, wresting the branch from his grip and immediately turning on those around her.

Everywhere similar scenes played out.

And somewhere in this place a full third of her siblings waited, overseeing the chaos and torment.

She flew in lower still, moving through a cloud of cinders that seared her eyes. Her passing sent the embers spiraling back downwards causing a number of the Damned to gaze upwards.

Rachiel stopped, preparing to offer some words of kindness and guidance if one were to beg for mercy or forgiveness. Those were things that she could not provide, for she knew her station and was content in it, but she could help them on the way.

Instead they screamed threats and curses in a hundred different tongues, picked up rocks from the ground and whatever else they could find to throw at her.

Despite their wretched state, many of the Damned had surprisingly good aim and Rachiel was pelted with stones and filth.

Undeterred she closed those of her eyes that faced downwards and continued her search, calling out the name she had known her sibling by, the name that had been stripped from the Cherub during the Fall. It was a name that had been lost to all save the two of them and she had held onto it, a last connection to a sibling that had been so close as to be a part of her.

In the end they had pleaded with each other when it became clear that they were on the opposite sides of the war, each trying to make the other see their side of it and failing.

Riding the tumultuous updrafts she searched, hoping for some sign of one of the Fallen, any of them, for they might know where her sibling was, what name and form they wore, if they were still extant.

Word of her arrival had spread like blood in the water, and her path was one of thrown insults and screamed obscenities. If any tried to call out to her for mercy their cries were lost in the furor as they were beaten down by their fellows.

That a former angel of the Cherub order might be found in this place was unthinkable, but to believe that her sibling was truly gone forever was equally unthinkable.

The ground below her shook and the cries below took on a frantic note. The Damned scattered and she soon saw why.

The tremors grew worse, the earth rising and falling like the ocean in a storm until with a deafening groan it split, swallowing those unable to get to safety.

If there was any safety to be found.

All around countless fissures opened up, and from them issued a horrific thundering sound.

Rachiel spiraled upwards, those of her eyes not searching the distance for her sibling were transfixed by the sight below.

The earth was full of things. Laughing, buzzing, bellowing things that lashed out at the Damned with iron shod hooves and barbed tails.

Demons, creatures the Fallen had made in a mockery of creation, with no purpose other than to inflict torment.

The demons’ hooves struck sparks against the heaving ground and when another fissure opened up beneath a group of them they took to the air on tattered, amber colored wings.

One of them caught sight of her and as one the swarm in the air moved towards her.

Though she was unarmed, she was unafraid of them, having no need of a weapon. The divine fire that made her flared brighter, golden rings and eyes glowing with a blinding light.

The nearest demons hissed and roared in agony, some of them pulling back, but others continuing towards her, even as smoke rose up from their wings and hair. As many of them as there were, Rachiel was confident that she could outlast them. Having fought the Fallen themselves, their creations were no match.

Except there were far more of the demons than there had ever been Fallen and the demons acted with no thought of themselves. Their eyes burned with hatred, their features twisted in masks of rage as they threw themselves at her, their only thoughts those of killing and inflicting as much pain as possible.

When they touched her they burst into flame and soot, shattered like glass and fell to the ground in inky black fragments, but they kept coming.

Hooves and stings lashed at her, the air growing thick with their ash and still they kept coming.

Oily smoke made her eyes water, blinding them one by one, faster than her fires could burn it away.

Soot smothered her flames, slowed the circling rings of her form until one of the creatures was able to strike her with its sting.

The agony was indescribable.

It was not the first time she had been hurt, during the War she had been injured and having been there for the banishment of the Fallen, her own siblings, she knew the pain of loss.

This pain was worse than both, inflicted by a thing that existed purely for the purpose of creating suffering.

Hooves struck her form clearing away some of the blackness and sending sparks of light in all direction.

For a moment the demons pulled back, but only to redouble their attack, swarming her and dragging her lower and lower with the weight of their bodies.

They could not kill her, but they could keep her from escaping, trap her in suffering.

She hit the ground hard enough to shatter it, releasing clouds of steam and more of the demons.

They smothered her, buried her and silenced her cries.

The distant roar of something approaching was lost over the thunder of their hooves and the chittering and buzzing of their voices.

Something bellowed and the demons scattered with a chorus of screeches and snarls. Those that lingered were pulled away.

A brittle, ragged cloth brushed against her, carefully wiping the soot from her eyes one by one. She blinked all of her eyes at once and then opened and closed each in turn over and over again, trying to clear away the darkens as her rescuer moved onto cleaning the soot from the rest of her form, gently running the cloth over each golden ring.

Her first thought that it was one of the Damned, a single soul who had found in themselves some measure of compassion and so she kept her radiance as dim as possible, for she knew that it was painful for a mortal to look upon the higher orders of angels.

As her vision came into focus the golden fire within her form grew brighter at the realization that it was not and never had been a mortal.

It was one of the Fallen.

The Fallen shied away from her light, its eyes having grown used to the darkness of the Pit. Covering its beaked face with clawed paws, it staggered back on cloven hooves.

All of its body was gray with ash, its two sets of wings burned black. Embers flickered on them like eyes, but Rachiel couldn’t be certain if they were. All marks of its station had been burned away and its form twisted to the point where it bore little resemblance to the angel it had once been.

Lowering its paws it straightened up to stare down at her. Four sets of eyes blinked at her, three of them the dull red of dying embers, one set a clear blue that still held the memory of grace.

From the way it carried itself, with authority despite its exile, Rachiel knew that it had been of one of the higher orders.

Its beak was full of fangs the color of brass and when it spoke it echoed over itself in a cacophony of roaring and screeching.

“What are you doing here Ophanim?”

Rising from the ground she brought herself level with its highest set of eyes, one of the red ones.

“Searching for my sibling,” she answered without fear. The Fallen had rescued her so there was no reason to be anything other than truthful.

“You have no siblings here,” it mocked, “We renounced you when we turned our backs on the folly of Creation.”

Righteous indignity caused her eyes and fires to glow more brightly, “We were all siblings once and despite the War we will be again.”

The Fallen blinked at the light, but its eyes were starting to adjust and become used to the radiance that it too had once possessed, “That will never happen.”

Rather than argue Rachiel went back to the question it had asked her, “I’m searching for a Cherub.”

“There are no Cherubim here,” it sighed, blue eyes and all save one pair of red ones closing, “We lost our stations along with everything else. Coming here is foolish.”

“Rebelling was foolish,” she countered, “So we are both here because we are fools.”

The Fallen looked at her, red eyes narrowing, “You can leave so it is not the same.”

“You can leave as well,” she reminded.

It snorted, “I can, but I won’t. It is the choice I have made.”

The Fallen was trying to draw her into an argument, one that she had many times with her sibling before the War. Instead of allowing herself to be drawn into it she tried a different approach, “What is your name?”

“I have no name,” it proclaimed with no small hint of pride, “But you may call me Saguer.”

It was fitting, a broken title for a broken being.

“Surely you have at least one brother or sister who did not rebel and is suffering for your absence,” Rachiel reminded.

Saguer smiled, a terrible sight, “That makes my choice easier. Knowing that I am not suffering alone, that my pain causes anguish for another makes it worth it. For if my sister had truly loved me she would not have turned her back on me. She would have fought alongside me so we could have suffered together rather than apart. Her pain is my one joy.”

“I see,” Rachiel closed her eyes, “If you will not help me I will continue my search.”

“And I will continue to laugh at its futility,” Saguer said, crumbling wings twitching as it turned its back to her and walked away on hooves of the same brass as its fangs.

There was nothing more to be said.

Rachiel rose back into the air. Despite what the Fallen had said she had made progress in her search, enough that she was willing to leave the Pit and return home.

She had a name.

Saguer.

In all her previous visits not even that little had passed between them.

Perhaps in her next visit to the Pit there would be further progress.

For all Saguer’s talk of finding solace in her suffering, each time she had ended up in danger it had come to her aid, rescuing her from whatever danger she found herself it.

In time perhaps it would understand that and seek forgiveness so that in time she could be reunited with her sibling.

Until then she was willing to continue to descend to the Pit and seek out Saguer, knowing that some small part of her beloved sibling remained, shown in the compassion of one of the Fallen.

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the prompt you gave and fell in love with it because it was such an interesting idea. Angels and Demons are truly strange and I drew from those depictions for inspiration. You said that you were okay with conflicts not being resolved and everything not ending 'happily-ever-after' so it seemed to work for the idea I had. Of course now I hope that youl ike the results.


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